So, while Dean and I love each other very much we don’t always agree on everything. I would wager most couples who are together for longer than six months would say the same. Recently, we were discussing the project and our vision for Blood & Dust and discovered one of those things we don’t agree on… What makes something a horror movie?

We have both been horror fans for a long time and we both love the genre. But our ideas about what is or isn’t a horror movie can differ greatly. So, in preparation for this podcast I sent out a call… on Twitter, Facebook, DreadCentral.com, and DeadRobotsSociety.com… and asked others what they consider horror. We got some really interesting responses.

Terry Mixon of the Dead Robots said horror “twists the normal and expected and makes it terrible and fearful.” Tee Morris says horror is “the unknown…on an adrenaline rush”. JD Sawyer differentiated between horror and terror, stating “Horror deals with things that should not be. Terror deals with immanent threats to life and limb.”

I particularly liked what Metamor City’s  Chris Lester had to say. “Horror explores the battle against evil, death & the unknown & usually has implicit assumptions about how we should face them. The evil is often supernatural but not always, & may come from outside or from within. Catharsis is usually the story’s goal.”

And that’s just the beginning of what people had to say. Clearly, horror is subjective. Anything can be horror, if it scares you. The Dead Robots’ Society recently asked me on the show to discuss this particular subject  as it pertains to writing– make sure you check out that episode either in our feed or at www.deadrobotssociety.com. We recorded this episode before that appearance actually, but do to some technical difficulties it took a little while to get this ready to go.

Anyway, it became clear that my view on horror is very broad and inclusive… if something is good and dark then I tend to claim them for us. And by us, I mean horror. So far this week I’ve claimed PG Holyfield, Tee Morris  (check out his latest offering on Erotica Ala Carte  if you don’t believe me), Dan Sawyer and Phillippa Ballantine.

Dean was a little more narrow in his definition. So we had a good old time debating what was horror and what wasn’t. Silence of the Lambs, American Psycho, Aliens… how did we classify them? Listen and see! And be sure to chime in with your thoughts on what we did or didn’t get right.

I hope our discussion enlightened you a little, and gives you a little insight into what we have planned for Blood & Dust.  

Sin-scarily,

Morgan Elektra

Promo: Cybrosis

Songs: Dark Matters – David Emeny

     It was supposed to be a simple thing. Morgan was going to do a straight read of the short story that she’d written, and I was going to edit out the coughs and the lip-smacks and the occasional flubbed line followed by delicate strings of profanities, and sit back and take it easy on this one. But then, she made a suggestion: “Why don’t we add in some bar noise in the background?” An easily-filled request, sure, and it was a good idea. This was a good twenty-minute story, after all, and just that simple little element would help ground the listener with a sense of time and space. Plus, I know exactly how easy it is to get lulled into a stupor by the rhythm of words, regardless of their quality, and before you know it, you’ve just listened to the past five minutes of a podcast without actually absorbing a single word that’s been said. That extra “sweetener” would help to get your brain’s attention right back in its seat where it should be. So I went to www.freesound.org and typed in “bar ambience”, and within seconds, I had several loops to choose from. Simple.

   Only, nothing’s ever simple with me.

   See, once I added in the bar noise, I realized how easy it was to identify the loop I’d selected as a loop. And there was this mention in the story of a tv playing in the background- only, it was hard to find anything long enough to be looped in that wasn’t also copyrighted. So we decided to change the noise of the tv to the noise of music from the sound system. And once that was done, I realized- it sounds like a bar, but it sounds like an empty bar. So I thought, why not add the sound of a chair scooting back right about here? And Morgan said, “Well, if we’re gonna do that, why don’t we put in the sound of the door opening over here?” And by the next time I let her listen to it, I’d downloaded about twenty-five sound effects for use in this one story. And those I couldn’t find, I’d Foleyed. I had the attack scene (spoiler!) layered in no less than seven separate simultaneous tracks. In short, I went wa-a-ay overboard.

   It’s very easy to think, “If I don’t go overboard, I’m going to go down with the ship.” In other words, if you don’t make it shine, nobody’s going to notice it. But the simple fact is, not every podcast out there is The Leviathan Chronicles. The majority of people out there are relying on the strength of their narrative to draw you in, and this time around, I had failed to do just that- to let my wife’s story come to life and breathe. So, after a week-and-a-half of editing the piece into the aural equivalent of a Michael Bay movie, it took me another week to simplify it back to a place where it was good solid sonic entertainment without sounding like I opened up the file in Audacity and dumped in everything in the drawer – which is why it took us so long to get this one out to you (Next time, I’m just going to tell you the dog ate my homework). I like what came out at the other end, and I hope you do, too- but rather than live on hope alone, I invite you to drop us a note and let us know how we’re doing. ‘Cause after all, if we’re not giving you what you want, it’s all just so much sound and fury.

   Thanks y’all,

Dean Sasser

ATTRIBUTION INFO FOR THIS EPISODE:

Certain sound effects used in the creation of this episode were provided by soundsnap.com and through the Freesound Project . All other sound effects were created using purchased sound effect libraries, or were created in-house.

Music for this episode was provided courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network at musicalley.com . The artists and songs used in the creation of this episode are:

David Emeny: DARK MATTERS

Candye Kane: I’m A Bad, Bad Girl

Carey Bell: Let Me Stir In Your Pot

Kelly’s Lot: Woman’s Love

Bree Demoss: Something New

Delilah Why: How Was I

You may be asking ‘Why are these crazy people podcasting? What makes them think they can do something like this?’ I know we ask ourselves that sometimes. So in Episode 02 we wanted to talk about the shows that first got us addicted to this crazy fun medium, and the people behind our favorite podcasts. This episode ran a little long because we were so enthusiastic about our podio-heroes and while I know we couldn’t be quite as eloquent as we would have liked, I hope you can hear and understand the love we feel for this people and shows they put out. Below is a little breakdown of the podcasts we talk about on the show (times listed are approximate).

*What favorite podcast list would be complete with mention of the Queen of Podcasting, Mur Lafferty?

3 min 15 secs – Zombinc Promo, courtesy of www.murverse.com

*Horror fans around the world should not miss Pseudopod.

9 min 15 secs – Pseudopod promo from www.pseudopod.org

*The one that started me down the rabbit hole, Metamor City.

13 min 45 secs – Metamor Season 2 promo from www.metamorcity.com

*The podcast with the Hollywood level production quality – The Leviathan Chronicles

18 min 45 secs – Leviathan Chronicles promo from www.leviathanchronicles.com

*Two of Dean’s fanboy favs, Comedy Death Ray Radio & The Uncanny X-Cast

*The tongue in cheek fantasy of How to Succeed in Evil

35 min 15 secs – How to Succeed in Evil promo from www.succeedinevil.com

*The ultimate, the amazing, the FDO! Scott Sigler.

41 min 30 secs – Ancestor book promo courtesy of www.scottsigler.com

*Tee Morris, the life of seemingly every party, and the mind behind Morevi and the Billibub Baddings series.

46 min 35 secs – Bird House Rules promo from www.teemorris.com

*The nicest guy in podcasting, JC Hutchins. There are not enough words to express how wonderful this guy is.

52 min 32 secs – 7^th Son: Descent promo courtesy of www.jchutchins.net

*I would listen to Phillippa Ballantine read me obituaries, or travel guides. And her writing is breath-taking!

57 min 47 sec – Digital Magic promo available on www.pjballantine.com

*Murder at Avedon Hill is a thrilling mystery. And I love PG Holyfield’s voice, as you will hear.

1 hr – Murder at Avedon Hill promo from www.pgholyfield.com

*A true Goddess of comedic timing, Christiana Ellis has multiple projects, all worth listening to.

1 hr 6 mins – Nina Kimberly the Merciless promo from www.christianaellis.com

*Nathan Lowell’s amazing Solar Clipper series has hooked Dean and me completely.

1 hr 17 mins – Quarter Share promo available from www.solarclipper.com

Of course, there are a lot of other podcasts and podcasters out there in all genres who are amazing and worthy of your adoration. You should Google shows like PC Haring’s Cybrosis, The Byron Chronicles, Michele Bekemeyers’ Trapping a Duchess, The Dead Robots Society, J Daniel Sawyer’s Antithesis Progression or Matt Wallace’s Failed Cities Monologues. There is a world of amazing content out there and we are proud to be venturing out among it, and aspiring to be in the same realm as the greats we have mentioned.  

Sin-scarily,

Morgan Elektra

Promo attribution list:

SFX (Freesound Project)

1)  Phone “beep”

      By HardPCM (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=205819)

            Chip001.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=31841)

2)  Phone ring / hang-up & dial tone

    By morgantj (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=27178)

            telephonering.mp3 (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=59738)

            telephone.mp3 (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=60755)

3)  Knife slashing noise

   By Abyssmal (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=307822)

            slashkut.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=35213)

Music

1)      orchestral_10_unnamable_L1 – Dynamedion – Soundsnap

2)      MUSICAL HITS ORCHESTRAL GLOCKENSHPIEL DARK DRAMATIC 01 – SFX Bible – Soundsnap

3)      dark_matters  – David Emeny – Podsafe Music Network

Not to get all philosophic on you, but if a tree falls in the woods, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? For the purposes of this blog, Confucius say: a-yuh. Now, if I were to produce a podcast wherein the listener was supposed to picture that falling tree, which nobody was actually around to see, and I did it by setting my microphone on the ground and dropping some dead leaves and a stick on top of it, would anybody care? Yes. Yes, anybody would. I say this, because I am just such an anybody. When I first got into the whole podcast scene, I came down a well-traveled road: Audiobook Lane, let’s call it. I was looking for a good read- one where I wasn’t the one doing the reading, seeing as how  I tended to tend to my habit while I was on the nine-to-five. 

My job, my current paying gig, is a torturously dull one, wherein I spend a lot of time chained to a desk in a bare-walled white room with only the beat of a copier to keep me otherwise occupied. And seeing as how my brain quickly and dementedly revealed to me that said beat just happened to be the same as that to the theme song for Mister Ed, and I didn’t want to be dragged from one bare-walled white room into another screaming, “A HORSE IS A HORSE OF COURSE OF COURSE!” over and over and over until the Thorazine kicked in, I needed to find other ways to occupy my mind, and fast. So I bought an iPod and I transferred my entire CD collection over to it. All 4,500-odd songs’ worth.

Problem solved, some might say. And some well might, only I began my CD collecting in the 90’s, long before we were graced with the frictionless force-field technology that most CD collectors use today ($49.95 on S-Mart.com, go look it up!). So, that left me with a collection of about a hundred songs that didn’t skip after the first ten seconds. All well and good if you’re “Weird” Al Yankovic putting together another masterful polka-jam, but for the discerning audiophile tired of listening to either A) Metallica’s Black Album; B) CAKE’s Fashion Nugget; or C) CLASSIC TV TUNES!, track three of which actually was the theme song to Mister Ed, the job wasn’t getting done. And since my wonderful white-walled job didn’t pay me well enough to spend $4356 re-downloading my mangled musical library, I decided to check out a much cheaper route. A free route, in fact: the free audiobook.

Y’see, there are people out there that write stories and then read them into a microphone and then put them on the web and then they don’t expect you to pay a single dime for them. The nerve.  And you know that old saying, “you get what you pay for”? Bollocks, dear friend. Though you may never have heard their names, there are true literary giants that walk unseen behind the airwaves. People like Scott Sigler, J.C. Hutchins, Christiana Ellis, and Tee Morris, who may not be household names to the world quite yet, but whose tales deserve just as much space in the folds of your brain as those of Stephen King, Michael Crichton, or Tom Clancy. Their stories are out there on the net, are every bit the equal of any dog-eared paperback in your collection, and they are available for free.

These free audiobooks are, of course, a trap. Because once you’ve listened to Jack Wakes Up, or downloaded a couple or forty short stories from Pseudopod, you’re going to have to have more- and more there is. There are free podcasts out there like Comedy Death-Ray Radio, a free-form hour of hilarity hosted by Scott Aukerman, with guest appearances from major movers and shakers like Sarah Silverman and Patton Oswalt. There’s The Uncanny X-Cast, a show hosted by Rob Briscoe and Brian Perillo, a podcast which is, on the surface, about the X-men, but underneath is about… well, it’s kinda like an episode of Seinfeld. It can go anywhere, without the slightest provocation, and in the process it will often leave you breathless, clutching at your sides, and wondering how you are possibly ever going to explain to your staring friends and co-workers that the laugher-induced tears coming from your eyes are because of the interview the guys just did with the creator of Cherry Poptart, and how you’re ever going to explain what Cherry Poptart is without incurring a massive sexual harassment lawsuit. And then there’s the hard stuff.

Audio dramas are my heroin. The Metamor City Podcast might as well come with a spoon and a lighter, honestly. It’s not just the stories (Which are enthralling), or the bevy of voice-actors at his command (Which are fabulous), it’s the cohesive feel of it all… Metamor is more than just a dot on a made-up map, it’s a place that you can never go, wish as hard as you might. There’s an essence to Chris Lester’s locale as ethereal and as real as New York City, or Paris, or Mordor. If you ever go through the gates, you’ll know you’re there, and a part of you will never come back. But the true black tar for me has to be Christof Laputka’s The Leviathan Chronicles. The instant I tried it, I was hooked, and damned. Listening to The Leviathan Chronicles is like watching Star Wars with your eyes closed. That’s as close as I can explain it. The episodes don’t come out very often, but you know what? I can understand why. This thing must be an absolute beast to put together. From the deep complexity and continuity of the show’s scripts, to the sheer amount of movie studio-quality sound effects, to the truly astounding work put together by the show’s cast, to the absolutely stunning soundtrack beneath it all, not a second of this podcast is put together half-heartedly. It’s all done with such exquisite and obvious care and precision, that I have no doubt that each episode must take months to put together, and to me, it’s well worth the wait. Although, being hooked on TLC as hard as I am can make it extremely hard to listen to dramatized podcasts that don’t try as hard. Which brings me back to my tree.

I’m pretty much a perfectionist when it comes to editing, whether it be writing or audio or video. Case in point: I’ve been working on this blog for two days now. Not because I’m the world’s worst typist, but because I have this tendency to go over everything with a fine-toothed comb, always fine-tuning and picking and generally pissing off my loving and understanding wife. Were it not for her influence and her solid grip on the computer, I would still be working on Episode One of our podcast, which took more than a month to get up in the first place. Now, sure, a lot of that was due to first-timers disease and technical errors… no, let’s say technical nightmares (A hint for the would-be’s out there: don’t ever use an “Essentials” program and think you’re going to get away with making anything professional come out of it. The programs are made to make you buy the full version, and unless you’re ready to put some serious time in pulling teeth from an angry, fully awake timber wolf, there are a dozen programs available for absolutely no cost online that will get you exactly the same results, if not better), but honestly, after being spoiled on podcasts like those I’ve mentioned, I’d spent a lot of time spinning my wheels because I had it in my head that it wasn’t impossible, and I could pull this off, just like the big boys.

I was wrong. You see, no man is his own crew, and I quickly came to realize that I couldn’t make this thing believable. Not on my own. I couldn’t take my microphone and drop sticks on it and call it a falling tree, and it took me half a month of stubbornly trying to make the computer do it my way to realize that. So I did what the pros actually do: I reached out. There’s this guy I know, Aaron Meier, that runs his own recording studio out of North Carolina (Check him out at http://www.steppingstonesound.com !), and he did wonders with fixing what I already screwed up. He took my barely-audible audio, cleaned it up, and sent it to the ball with a smile on its face, and for his help and his pointers on going forward, I will be eternally grateful. I also used three of the most valuable resources available for podcasters on the web: soundsnap.com, the freesound project at freesound.org, and the Podsafe Music Network (AKA musicalley.com). Without the substantial libraries available for public use at these websites, our podcast would have become something I’d never listen to. And I think, at least, that it’s now become something that anybody might actually listen to and enjoy. Even if that anybody is me.

- Dean Sasser

-

ATTRIBUTIONS FOR THIS EPISODE

Sound Effects

 

Samples used from Soundsnap

Soundsnap – Big Room Sound:

http://www.soundsnap.com/user-name/j_r_fountain

Samples used from Freesound

    January 6, 2010

        By Incarnadine (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=36298)

            modulated_radio_static.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=16997)

        By ermine (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=15220)

            bleep1p0.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=24053)

            bleep10.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=24052)

        By cognito perceptu (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=57789)

            am band static.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=38693)

        By parabolix (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=1036771)

            zombie news.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=72832)

        By Experimental Illness (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=265625)

            M207b13_we_interupt_this_broadcast_to…wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=31681)

 

Music

 

Music used from Music Alley

David Emeny:  Dark Matters:

http://www.musicalley.com/music/listeners/artistdetails.php?BandHash=82458b254d06c8e52cff4f82b3213b5a

Adrina Thorpe:  MIDNIGHT

http://www.musicalley.com/music/listeners/artistdetails.php?BandHash=a892daf89e5efee9bd4705bbf8c092fc

Hudson Cerone: One Plus One

http://www.musicalley.com/music/listeners/artistdetails.php?BandHash=39681958356257d2ccecfa0731ba579b

It seems like everyone has a podcast these days. If you look on iTunes, or any other catcher really, there’s podcasts for everything under the sun. I figured it wouldn’t be…. couldn’t be… that hard for us to do one. Boy, was I underestimating people! Our introductory episode, in which the Mister and I introduce ourselves and talk a little about our love of horror and what we’ll be doing with the podcast, wasn’t even easy to RECORD. He and I kept going off on tangents, or sitting there staring at each other and not knowing what to say. Minutes of dead air! It was not pretty. But finally we managed to do something that was at least semi-passable, and the Mister was able to edit it together fairly quickly.

And then came our trevails…

Having never done a podcast before, we then had to figure out how to export the file from the program we used to record it (which shall remain nameless), which we only realized would not save files as MP3 after we spent better than an hour recording, and into Audacity. Once that was done and we had our spiffy MP3 ready, we faced the dubious task of setting up a feed. Despite having bought Podcasting for Dummies, and googling the hell out of ”creating a podcast feed”, neither myself, the Mister, or our dashing Webmistress could figure out what it was we were doing wrong. We could generate something that looked similar to the xml code the various sites said we were supposed to have, but it kept coming up errors! I swear, I’d about decided that what we needed was not Podcasting for Dummies (which is really a very good and helpful book), but Podcasting for the Completely Retarded: The Foam Helmut & Drool Cup Edition.

Luckily, between the three of us and with some help from my favorite Speed # 9 (aka the wonderful and webtastic Jon Condit) who does amazing things with the Dread Central site and with no small thanks to several websites, we managed to get the code written and uploaded and ready to go!

So, here are the steps we followed and sites we used, should there be anyone else out there who is as technically challenged as I turned out to be and needs some help.

Once you have your MP3 file all edited and ready to go:

1. Upload the MP3 file to your host/server of choice

2. Go to www.podcastblaster.com and sign up, it’s free and instant.

3. Fill in the information regarding your podcast, including the URL for the MP3 you uploaded. Once you’re done filling in all the info, save. Podcastblaster will generate the XML code with the info you put it, so make sure it’s all correct! 

4. Download the xml file from the site. Make sure you save it somewhere where you can easily find it.

5. Upload the xml file to your host. And viola!

Yeah, really simple when I say it all out like that right? And now we KNOW it is. But getting to the point that our brains understood that knowledge was quite a journey!

Thank goodness we got there. Check out our Podcasts page to listen to the final product. Despite the ups and down it took to get it finished, I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to let us know what you think. There’s more to come!

xxx!

Sin-scarily,
Morgan Elektra

 

If you’re interested in starting your own podcast, check out the sites below:

http://www.podcastblaster.com/

http://www.podcast411.com/howto_1.html

http://www.sweetwater.com/feature/podcasting/howto.php

http://www.amazon.com/Podcasting-Dummies-Computer-Tech/dp/047027557X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263357834&sr=8-1